My first 100 days at Peak Proteins – by Naimah Begum
With US President Joe Biden laying out his plans for his first 100 days in office, one of our recent recruits, Naimah Begum, shares her thoughts on her first 100 days at Peak Proteins.
Nothing could have prepared me for the year of 2020. It started with me still at university trying to complete my lab project and graduate. However, as soon as the pandemic started, it completely disrupted my final semester, with labs cancelled, on campus teaching cancelled and exams severely affected. In the midst of the disruption, I knew I had to keep on going. So, I had just graduated from university, but what now? I knew I wanted a lab-based job but with the situation with the pandemic, securing a job was an option I feared was never going to happen. After multiple PhD and job applications, I finally secured an interview with Peak Proteins. Nervous was an understatement as to how I was feeling, it was more like relief. Relief, that in the midst of a pandemic, I had a shot at securing my dream job as a scientist. After my interview, via Teams of course, I was successful, and offered a chance to become a scientist with Peak Proteins.
My first week at Peak Proteins was quite full on. On day one, I was taking in all of the information needed to work safely as an employee at Peak Proteins, and by day two I was straight in the labs working alongside my supervisor, Anna. Having the opportunity to get straight to work in the lab, making proteins for an overseas client, was exciting but I did feel a lot of pressure to provide good results. As my background had mainly been in academia and working in research labs, going into the industry was very different. One of the main differences was the fact that I had to now be extremely mindful of the resources I was using as they are often costly instruments and reagents and any mistakes made when purifying proteins could disrupt the project. However, thanks to my extremely helpful colleagues, I received endless guidance on how to carry out all the different protocols using numerous pieces of lab equipment. This helped me to be more efficient and gave me more confidence when purifying proteins in the lab. Not only was I given training in protein purification, but I was lucky enough to get some experience in protein crystallography under the guidance of Head of Protein Crystallography, Tina (Howard). It was a completely new area for me but I really enjoyed learning how to grow and image crystals. It was something I had learnt a lot about in theory at university but it all made sense when I was actually physically working with crystals. I even managed to fish out a crystal onto a loop for X-ray imaging in my first go!
A couple of months into the role, the more responsibilities I was given, and as my training was progressing well, I was assigned my first project working for my first client in the US. From the early stages of protein purification to shipping the final product to happy clients elicits a great sense of accomplishment and this is part of what drives me to always keep on going.
As well as adjusting to working in an industrial lab setting, another challenge I gave myself was writing case studies and blogs for the website. Again, coming straight from academia, I was used to writing long-winded and extremely detailed literature reviews, dissertations and reports, thinking only about achieving a first-class grade. However, writing literature reviews is completely different to blogs and case studies; this was the first time I was writing with the intention of really grabbing the reader’s attention and making them genuinely interested in our company’s services. I had to write in a much simpler manner, making sure that it was interesting, yet informative. There were many times where I found that my writing started to slowly sound like a literature review and constantly had to change the style of my writing. Now, writing blogs for the website is something I am quite passionate about and I am constantly thinking of new content.
As a newly graduated scientist, starting a new job in a new industry, meeting my new colleagues was initially extremely nerve racking, but as the months went by, I became much more comfortable. This was mainly due to the wonderful senior scientists who made me feel very welcomed. One of the great things about being a part of a small company is that you get to know every single employee and form really good relationships with them. I am grateful that I get to work with highly experienced scientists who have been in this industry for decades; learning from them has helped me to develop my skills in protein purification.
The support, guidance and patience of my colleagues has really helped me during my first 100 days at Peak Proteins and I really look forward to my future here!
